Diverse Class, White Teacher, and I (Who Am I?)

[Shaw Qin]

My first observation on diversity relates to indirect language that might favor students from a white, middle-class background. When I was reading Lisa Delpit’s work, it struck me that I immediately recognized my own way of talking to the students I was working with. “Do you want to check your answer for this problem?” “How’s your work going on?” My words danced around the fact that I was supposed to have more power than the students, but I tried not to show this power by phrasing everything as indirect questions (I will reflect on how I fit into the culture of power in the classroom at the end of this blog). I knew I most likely learned this tactic from observing the classrooms of Mrs. Talbot and those I was in as a Reads and Counts tutor because before that, I had little experience with the kind of language (in English) teachers were supposed to use in classrooms. (It might also be possible that teachers in my K-12 education experience in China also used similar language, but I couldn’t recall.) Therefore, I went into the classroom hoping to observe whether the teachers at Northfield Middle School use this kind of indirect, middle-class language when talking to their students. Surprisingly, I found that Mrs. Talbot, while using indirect speech, spoke in a somewhat demanding tone and signaled that what she said were not mere suggestions or questions but rather things students need to do. On the one hand, Mrs. Talbot’s tone indicated that she might not be hesitant to display her power in the classroom, although she did not use the most explicit language. On the other hand, even if they were not familiar with the way authority is expressed in the culture of power, students would find no trouble understanding what the teacher tells them to do. However, I observed that the other tutor in Mrs. Talbot’s classroom, a person of color, used many direct languages when talking to students of color. The students seemed to accept the style of interaction well.

My other observation relates to students’ choice of groupings. Mrs. Talbot assigns seats in her class. Throughout my time in her classroom, she changed the seating arrangement once the school moved on to the next quarter. Based on my observation, Mrs. Talbot’s 7th-period class was racial and ethnically diverse: about half of the class could be students of color. In both seating arrangements, it seemed that white students were likely to be assigned to be desk partners with a student of color. During the regular pair-work time, some students interacted with their partners effectively and learned together. Still, some worked independently or chatted with their partners so much that they did little work. I found that students were relatively equally likely to work constructively with partners when the pair is white-POC, white-white, or POC-POC. Therefore, it seemed that Mrs. Talbot was fairly successful in ensuring students across ethnic-racial backgrounds could work together in structured pairs. However, during the rare, pal-pair sessions when Mrs. Talbot allowed students to find their own partners, it was apparent that the students were still highly divided based on their gender and race. However, as Deborah said in class, the point of teachers was not to eliminate the opportunities for students to talk with their (less diverse) natural friend groups. Since those free grouping sessions were rare enough, I feel that Mrs. Talbot strikes a balance between encouraging cross-group mixing in learning settings and maintaining social relationships with friends. However, I wish Mrs. Talbot could be more explicit in conveying expectations for outcomes of pair work and how students could interact constructively with their partners.

Finally, I would like to reflect on my position of power in middle school classrooms. First of all, I enter the classroom labeled as “a college student,” “an adult to help with schoolwork,” and, by extension, “a teacher-like person.” Therefore, regardless of my own background, I represent the white middle class’s culture of power in the U.S. Second, coming from a middle-class background, my culture of power back in China can partially transfer into the U.S. setting. For instance, my home culture respects teachers’ authority because of their status as teachers, not because they display authoritative behaviors (although my teachers also display many authoritative behaviors). This cultural background allows me to navigate some aspects of the U.S. educational system with ease. However, perhaps from the students’ perspective, what I represent symbolically is more important than what I actually am. Even though I clearly have an accent and am Asian (the most “foreign” ethnicity in the U.S., as I read somewhere), I represent U.S. higher education and, to some degree, teachers, which undoubtedly exemplify the culture of power. This is a new aspect of my influence in the classroom that I have just begun to consider since I previously was quite ambiguous about my position in the discussion of “white teacher teaching diverse classrooms.” I am not white, but it seems that I come from a position of power, yet I am also “foreign” in some sense. This section may not have a satisfactory conclusion since it is still highly thought in progress.

[Renee Smith]

Hi Shaw,

I think it’s really fascinating that you brought up the idea that by being labelled as “college students” when we entered our tutoring classrooms, we represent the white middle class’s culture of power. In my own processing of how my class viewed me, I never even considered the fact that I was a representative of higher education, which is sort of another level to socioeconomic class diversity. It definitely makes me wonder if the students I worked with saw me differently than they would if I had been just a volunteer tutor who wasn’t associated with a college. Would they have interacted with me differently based on whether they planned on going to college or not? Does that fact that we are also Carleton (a relatively prestigious and expensive college) students also have an impact? This is definitely something that I too will have to think more about. I think your discussion of direct vs indirect language is also really interesting, since in my tutoring I found myself exclusively using indirect language as well, because I wasn’t sure of the power my role in the classroom was expected to have.

[Paul Fairchild]

I appreciate your perspective on your position of power in the classroom, regardless of your actual identity. Working with kindergarteners, I never really considered the power dynamic that adults have within our educational system, let alone the place that I held within that system. It sounds like your teacher is doing a good job catering to student diversity and is trying to foster a healthy classroom environment. I also find your reflection on the way that we speak to students in our schools tend to represent the language of the majority. You could do a whole linguistics comps on that if you wanted to. I hope you had a good term tutoring, and bless you for working with the middle schoolers!

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